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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23623177">The Cathedral</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mniotilta/pseuds/dolichonyx'>dolichonyx (mniotilta)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Critical Role (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, Gen, Group Therapy, Hurt/Comfort</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 17:42:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,946</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23623177</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mniotilta/pseuds/dolichonyx</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>And the men of fire, earth, and sea began to tell their tales on a cold night.</p><p>(aka, the boys do some good ol' group therapy)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Caduceus Clay &amp; Fjord &amp; Caleb Widogast</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>58</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Cathedral</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I've been working on this on and off for over six months and the fic has changed a lot over time but I think it's "complete" enough for now happy quarantine y'all.</p><p>Vague spoilers if you haven't gotten to episode 72 yet?</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>On a couch in the common area purrs a cat, tail flicking on occasion to the rhythm of the soft petting of his master, whose eyes are closed and his jaw feels wired shut by all the tension he’s keeping, suffocating, in his throat. In repetitiveness he finds comfort, peace, and after a few minutes he manages to open one eye lazily in the direction of Fjord, sitting in a chair across the room, who drums his knuckles on the dark wood of the armrests and hums deeply the tune of a work song he learned on the docks of Port Damali. Fjord doesn’t look directly at Caleb—although he can see him out of the corner of his vision—and continues to drum and sing softly, drifting from humming to opening his mouth and forming words for some verses before reverting back to a lipless drone.<br/>
<br/>
Like a ghost enters Caduceus. He is white-robed and the cloth hangs off his frame loosely, like the weeping branches of a willow, and his strides are largely silent safe for the scraping of stone against the bottoms of his bare feet and the clicking of something ceramic in his hands.<br/>
<br/>
“Here,” he says, handing a porcelain mug to Fjord and then across the room to Caleb, exchanging quiet thank yous before sighing into a third chair and stirs his own mug with a steel spoon.<br/>
<br/>
“Careful, it’s hot, and very sweet. Elliott family. They grew the finest blueberries.”<br/>
<br/>
Minutes of near silence between small sips, with only the sound of the clanging of the cleric’s spoon, the song of a sailor, and the rumbled purring of a familiar beneath the hand of a scholar.<br/>
<br/>
“Now,” Caduceus smiles, setting down a glass half full and leaning forward, resting his hands underneath his chin. “Should we begin?”<br/>
<br/>
And the men of fire, earth, and sea began to tell their tales on a cold night.<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
In the heart of the Empire burned a flame, a flame that was snuffed in his prime and left nothing behind but fallen ash and a smoldering, smoking bent wick as dark and as sullied as the blackest of sin. Without warmth he grew cold, in stasis, withering, and even though he burns again he will never be quite the same.<br/>
<br/>
Caleb drips of frozen candlewax, it runs colorless down from the tops of his lonely tower and there are static pools around the base far below. He feels that even if he is encouraged to once again burn warmly he will never be able to reverse the flow of what has now hardened. His candle looks like it has been weeping for centuries and while they once ran hot trails down his cheeks they have solidified into something unrecognizable. He has turned from a boy that once stood tall like an unlit match into one that has been spent, broken in half, discarded, and hastily bent back into place by the hands he now holds.<br/>
<br/>
I am hopeful, and also I am afraid, he says.<br/>
<br/>
He was once so warm but he was taught to be cold. He was taught to put his heart in a freezer but he felt too strongly, was too imperfect to be used as a tool, and he melted all of the ice around him until he was drowned in the water of his own sorrow. Once waterlogged the wick now sparks alight, on occasion—it scares him, he tries to snuff it out. He is afraid to feel again, to love again, and if he forgave himself he would be unrecognizable. Who is a man without his griefs, his regrets? When you were manipulated into destroying everything you held dear how do you admit that you care? When you are terrified you will alight your second home ablaze?<br/>
<br/>
He was a boy, interrupted, and after a lost decade he doesn’t know how to divorce himself from his pain.<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
Caduceus is tall but he is not the tallest tree in the grove. While he is young and green and bendable he grew on the stray beams of light that filtered down from the canopy. He is a part of this ecosystem and he is protected by it, thrives by it, is harmed by it. He listens and tries to live truthfully but he is still a disobedient son in some ways.<br/>
<br/>
The landscape may change and only the bedrock holds the true wisdom of the world—when a storm breaks the bones of young trees and leaves the valley a scattered wasteland it is a tragedy and a celebration in the same breath. To die is to give new life—each being is neither created nor destroyed, only changed into something new. This he knows and he knows well, it is his scripture, the rose-colored lenses through he sees the world.<br/>
<br/>
But what happens to a tree—once surrounded by its own species—when is left to struggle alone? What happens when one by one the forest falls around it, when the grasslands turn to ash, when the cold and bitter winds of the north leave nothing but a single spot of green upon the desolate taiga? To live in isolation is to die, to shrivel, and he is withering. He can support the bugs that burrow into his core and the birds that nest on his branches and the voles that nibble on his roots but who will support him when the rain stops falling and the sun goes dark? He looks like he is starving, with his bony features, and in a way he has been.<br/>
<br/>
He has become a non-native member of the flock, an invasive friend that smiles and nods and listens and as the months have gone on he has flourished. He is a potted plant reunited with the whole ground, the broken shards of ceramic that formerly bound him now scattered as his roots dig deep into this new network. But as he takes hold he doesn’t know what to make of it, what to want from it, what to do when you can do everything. All creatures have their habits and his run deep over the decades. He finds himself somewhat stuck in between his own self-righteousness and a crooked sense of holiness.<br/>
<br/>
He won’t tell them what is bothering him. He is profoundly stubborn and set in his ways.<br/>
<br/>
He was starving long before he felt the pains in his gut but he has never been a predator, in pursuit of what he wants, and the notion of such a violent seizure for the self is foreign, difficult.<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
And he dreams of endless seas and being lost on the ocean still, but he feels he has found his direction finally. He is still tumbling in the air like a gull oscillating on the breeze but he doesn’t feel like he is at risk of drowning in unknown depths, his lungs filling with water, as they do in his nightmares.<br/>
<br/>
He is still very much a work in progress—as everyone is, but for him it is not about sharpening himself as it is about deconstruction. He was a discarded bottle in the surf, green glass trying to mold himself to fit in among the others on the shelves.<br/>
<br/>
You sanded down ridges of yourself that stuck out, that make you a target, that make people not want to select you. You were pressured to blend into the world, mimicking those you looked up to. You see reflections in the depths of inky black water but those reflections looking back at you are not yours. You will only get lost if you live as a cheap imitation of others.<br/>
<br/>
And power, power is hard to give up. To have power and to wear it like a mask made him feel strong, important, needed. But the real power he needed was to be told that it was okay to be himself, afraid, damaged, mortal. Now, he is letting himself flow at the mercy of the waves instead of working against the current, accepting the undertow as it embraces him fully. He will be molded—but by warm hands this time—and he will tumble over and over again in the surf until his soul will be polished into the person he was always supposed to become.<br/>
<br/>
And faith, faith is a powerful thing. The gods of this world are powerful and exist beyond the fathoms of his imagination.<br/>
<br/>
But the greatest gift that was imparted upon him was not from those on high or from those down in the depths below, but from those around him who said to have faith in himself—and not the self that he wishes to be but the self that he is, which is to say the Fjord who has discarded all the masks he tried on.<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
Fjord, you are a shape changer because you have never been allowed to be yourself, to feel comfortable in your own skin. You have contorted and twisted yourself to fit into tiny slots not meant for you, not built for you, and you have suffered. You need not longer—we will guide you as we help you unravel the knotted mass of yourself, the layers of deception you have built as armor, and we will accept you no matter what lies at your core.<br/>
<br/>
But I still feel like I will no longer be valued if I am stripped down of everything.<br/>
<br/>
You are no longer alone and bobbing along in the surf, we will pull you up when you stumble and pull away the veils in front of your face and we will not judge, we will not care, because you are important to us. Because you are you.<br/>
<br/>
We will accept you wholeheartedly for who you are until you learn to accept yourself.<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
Caduceus, you are the middle child, far from perfect but reliable, built to be unchallenging, the one who offers the olive-branch of peace at the expense of yourself. You have been a caregiver, a counselor, a moss-covered rock that has remained unmoving even during times of strife—your whole life has been about devotion, to something beyond yourself, and while that is noble it is also important to not forget to tend to your own garden, overgrown with weeds.<br/>
<br/>
But I feel guilty for wanting more, for changing, for desires of my own.<br/>
<br/>
Ah, but that is the most fundamental rule of nature: to need, to want, sometimes in excess, messily, to change, to evolve. After being stuck in a stagnant soil it is hard to remember how to move, how to breathe, how to sink your teeth into life and pull from it all that you need to not only survive but thrive.<br/>
<br/>
We will take care of you softly until you learn to take care of yourself.</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
Caleb, you are empathetic, and this is why it hurts. Despite everything, the kindness could not be beaten out of you, in the end your love was too strong. It destroyed you, it made you a failure in the eyes of those that tried to twist you into something you were not, and yet even then your heart couldn’t be smothered.<br/>
<br/>
But I am a broken pile of shattered glass, he says, splintered and ruined.<br/>
<br/>
Then we will make you into a stained glass window, taking every fractured shard of yourself and smooth it with water, gild it to metal, and there in the high eaves of the cathedral you will glitter in the sun and your patterned colors will be scattered across the floor beautifully.<br/>
<br/>
We will love you endlessly until you learn to love yourself.</p>
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